One has to wonder how “Selma," the gripping new historical drama that chronicles Martin Luther King’s struggle to grant black Americans the right to vote, ended up with a mostly British cast.

“You know, things just happen,” the film’s director Ava DuVernay said with a laugh, patting star David Oyelowo on the shoulder in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.

“As an actor you’re just seeking a part that matches you, and as a director you’re seeking an actor that fits that part. These actors are exquisite, and David was the only choice for Dr. King,” DuVernay added.

Growing up in England, Oyelowo explained how he came to absorb the iconic role of the civil rights leader.

A joint project by Lebanese NGO Zakira and UNICEF has made that possible by giving disposable cameras to 500 children in Lebanon’s refugee camps, and telling them to take pictures of whatever took their fancy.

Jordanian Foreign Minister told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday that Japanese hostage Kenji Goto, who is currently held by ISIS, is part of the negotiations with the terror group, but that Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh is the priority.

“Yes, of course,” Nasser Judeh told Amanpour over the phone in response to questioning about whether Kenji Goto is part of ongoing negotiations with ISIS, which were made public on Wednesday.

“But as you know our priority is our pilot, but we are cooperating very, very closely with our Japanese friends and allies. It is ISIS, Daish [the Arabic acronym used for the group], that has tied the fate of the two captives together.”

Judeh also confirmed that the negotiations had been taking place for weeks and through intermediaries.

Greece’s new anti-austerity government is made up of “strange bedfellows,” an expert in Greek politics told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday as the new Prime Minister Alex Tsipras formed a coalition with a right-wing party and unveiled a cabinet.

Kevin Featherstone, Professor of Contemporary Greek Studies at the London School of Economics said “the independent Greek party, which is the small coalition party with Syriza from the elections, is on record as being anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant; it is a far right nationalist party.”

“Why, then, has Syriza got into coalition with this party? It's perhaps a signal of the insistence of being anti-austerity. This is a party that above all is a fanatic about ending the austerity measures, ending the conditionality from Europe.”

On the day the world marked seventy years since the liberation of Auschwitz, survivor and Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that had many Hungarian Jews been warned about the death camp, they would never have gone there in the first place.

“[In] 1944 we didn’t know Auschwitz existed. Had we known, believe me, had Roosevelt, had Churchill, on the radio stations turned to Hungarian Jews saying ‘Hungarian Jews, don’t go to the train, because the trains will lead you to Auschwitz,’ people – many of us would not have gone.

“Many wouldn’t have believed, perhaps, but wouldn’t have gone, but nobody warned us, and nobody came to our help.”

Born in Romania, Wiesel was fifteen when he was sent to Auschwitz in Poland with his family in 1944.

Fifteen years ago, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and his wife Melinda started a foundation aimed at reducing poverty and improving healthcare.

Since then, they have given away more than $30 billion in grants, investing heavily in the fight against diseases such as Malaria, polio and pneumonia.

This year the Gates decided to raise the bar and, in their 2015 Annual Letter, they announced their next bet: child deaths will go down by half by 2030 as a result of vaccines, better sanitation and other improvements.

“We've brought down child mortality. We've cut it in half and you'll have 25 years. That's incredible,” Melinda Gates told CNN’s Amanpour in an interview that aired Thursday.

“If we focus on it, yet again, you can cut that childhood death down again in the next 15 years by half if you give kids an education. Getting a child into school, boys and girls, changes the whole pattern,” she added.

The extreme Islamist group ISIS is being pushed back, the Iraqi Prime Minister told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday.

Haider al-Abadi referred to ISIS as "Daish", the Arabic acronym used for the group.

He said “the onslaught of Daish has been reversed, not fully but is being reversed, it’s in the opposite direction now, I think that’s very important.”

Representatives from member countries of the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS gathered in London on Thursday to discuss their coordinated effort against the terrorist group, which has claimed large swathes of Syria and Iraq.

Haider al-Abadi said that with continued support from the alliance, ISIS could be forced out of Iraq in a matter of months.

“If we’re talking about eliminating Daish from the face of the Earth, I think that will take a long time, but If we are talking about pushing Daish out of Iraq, that can take months. I think we have the capability now, with enough support from the international coalition - I have to be very blunt about this, we need this support, the support is essential.”

The EU will stand united in keeping up its pressure on Moscow, the EU Foreign Affairs Chief Federica Mogherini told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.

“The main point that is surprising and probably also affecting the Russian leadership is our unity, the impossibility to divide us, and I count on us to stay united.”

Mogherini told Amanpour that while “it would be naive and probably stupid to say that there are no differences among Europeans,” they’ve “managed, over the last year, to keep united and take all our decisions by unanimity, because we know that our decisions are not linked to single member states' interests, but they are linked to a principle that we cannot accept the violation of international rules. This is the basic core principle of the European Union.”

Mogherini, who took up the lead role in November, came under fire this week after a paper she circulated was widely seen as a suggestion to ease sanctions on Russia.